Sudan's main rebel group yesterday welcomed the planned deployment of UN troops in southern Sudan once a final deal is signed to end one of Africa's longest and bloodiest wars.
"This is good news. The deployment will go a long way to support the restoration of peace in southern Sudan," Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) spokesman George Garang said in Nairobi.
Meanwhile, reports of clashes in and around a village in northern Darfur continue to disturb food delivery to thousands of the displaced, UN officials said on Sunday.
One road west of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, leading to the town of Tawilla has been declared a "no-go" zone for UN personnel following reports of "serious disturbances" and rumors of "heavy skirmishes" between the government and the rebel SPLM/A, said Barry Came, a World Food Program (WFP) staffer in Khartoum.
Came said a sense of security prevailed for a couple of days after accords were signed between the Sudanese government and the two main rebel groups on Nov. 10 in Nigeria, promising aid organizations unfettered access to Darfur's displaced cause and banning "hostile" military flights over the region.
"For a couple of days last week it looked like there was a lessening of tension," he said, adding that a camp that hosts 150,000 displaced in Jabal Mara mountains was reached by aid convoys for the first time in two weeks.
WFP trucks loaded with 235 metric tonnes of food were stuck in El Fasher for two days, before commercial trucks instead carried the food to Tawilla on Sunday, Came said.
An eight-member team of African Union Commission personnel left to Tawilla on Sunday to investigate the complaints.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
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